If I understand tomkarlo's point correctly, he's saying that you don't have to make more money year to year in order to have a viable business. Rather, you simply need to keep expenses low enough to manage a respectable profit for your investors. That profit need not necessarily grow year to year for investors to find it worth holding.
Of course, valuations will be made completely differently for such a company, but that doesn't mean they can't exist.
In almost any definition "growing a business" means increasing unit sales, or increasing revenues, or both.
Neither is necessary to provide acceptable returns to an investor - there are great investments around in businesses that have long since peaked in terms of unit volume and revenue. Much of the private equity world focuses on these kinds of investments.
But:
>Profitability and cash returns from a business can grow as revenues decline if the company either increases operating efficiency, or reduces in investment in recognition of the declining opportunity.
Sure. When I say growth, I mean "make more money this year than you did the year before". This doesn't directly translate into "make more widgets", of course – that's just the (in an ideal world) easiest and least complicated way of achieving that.
>yet if managed properly can continue to throw off gobs of cash for years to come.
Until! It dies ;0.